Twenty-three
by salamandragora
Summary: Kyouko's lived a lot longer than she expected to. She thinks a little about the past and future, and recites a made-up little chant that helps her believe that she hasn't accidentally become a witch without realizing it. One-shot. Rated (M) only because Kyoko curses a lot to herself.


**Hey. Hi.**

**If you're reading this because you followed me from the only other thing I've written on here so far and this is randomly assailing your inbox, thanks! A lot. A lot a lot. For reading or reviewing or any of those things you did. If you decide to read this or anything else I put up, cool. I hope you like it.**

**If you're here for another reason, I hope you like it too.**

**So here's a thing I wrote today.**

**Oh, er, spoilers for the movie Logan. Haha, are you now extremely confused?**

* * *

You know when everybody used to have antennas for their TVs? How sometimes you'd go and duct tape the bunny ears upside down on the wall just to get that weird channel with spotty reception because there was some special program you wanted to see really badly? And then a family member would step on the wrong floorboard and it was gone, and nothing you did afterwards would get you anything but static?

Kyouko figured she was like one of those channels.

Kyouko was a fucking 23 year old magical girl.

And that made her a bonafide geezer. Up to about 19 she was a kind of 'weird senpai' to all the other (younger) magical girls. After that, she kinda entered the realm of just plain creepy to the next generation of up and comers in her city. But it suited her just fine if the kids kept their distance. She'd gotten sick of getting to know em just to see one after the other die, or, you know, worse. Ahhh, she was getting all introspective thanks to that freaking movie.

Kyouko had never once in her life cried at a movie until she'd sat down and watched Logan last weekend. Felt fitting that she'd empathize most with an old, selfish comic book character. Too bad there was no chance of her getting to "die with her heart in her hand", right? Heh, so fucking clever. Aw shit, she was still getting all choked up thinking about it even four days after the fact.

But seriously, at this point, just like Wolvie himself there was no way Kyouko was gonna be lucky enough to have her life end by getting killed. Becoming a magical girl was about getting your face smashed into a steep-as-hell difficulty curve at windshield-launching velocities, where the point was that inevitably you'd wipe out and get annihilated before you reached the summit. But, holy shit, what happened if by luck alone someone made it over to the other side? Of course, she'd figured that's what the whole soul gem corruption thing was about: a final fail safe.

Well, tough luck for those dipshit Incubators. Because Kyouko had made it over the summit as a forged-in-fire combat goddess, and somehow she _also_ had her head screwed on at least halfway straight. Savage, cynical pragmatism plus a liiiitle slice of un-smothered hero-complex seemed to be the secret recipe for fucking the whole system up.

Though... to be fair, if you inverted those ratios to a disgusting amount of heroic nonsense (goddamn she got giddy whenever she accidentally quoted Megatron) and a tiny tiny _tiny_ bit of realism, apparently that recipe somehow worked too.

"If you look any harder you're gonna cross your eyes. What're you expecting to see, a lone candle's dancing flame in the depths?"

The voice dripped with its owner's usual high energy and good natured teasing, and was accompanied by an elbow jabbing into Kyouko's ribs. Yeah yeah, fuck off, it's an aquarium, idiot—staring pensively into bodies of water was the point.

"Nah. Thinkin it'd be nice if I could catch myself a mermaid, though."

She saw blue eyes lift with a smirk in the reflection of the aquarium's glass.

"Gross. So out of character I wanna puke. We're terrible at sounding even remotely poetic."

Well, Kyouko didn't really agree, but there was no way she was gonna say that, obviously. Might as well jump straight to something way more embarrassing and emotionally vulnerable.

"Hey. Can we... check?"

Blue eyes remained smiling, but they dimmed just a little.

"Right now? I mean, just this morning, we..."

She knew that. Or thought she knew, at least. But this place—an _aquarium_ of all things—had been a really stupid idea, and it was making her feel weird. Melancholic. Disconnected. Making her doubt who she really was.

"Please."

Sigh. A little exasperated, but mostly indulgent. Gods that didn't exist, this girl was so freaking strong. The blue in her eyes had dimmed almost to darkness once, but ever since then they'd only kept getting brighter.

"Sure sure, no problem. Aw man, you're lucky you have such a sweet girlfriend."

And _that_ made Kyouko laugh—sudden and sharp, wincing her eyes and baring her canines. Oh god, if ever there was an understatement in all this screwed up universe, it was calling them mere goddamn _girlfriends_.

Did the Moon call the Earth a weekend drinking buddy?

They turned to face each other—no reflection separating them now—and reached out their hands, lacing left with right, right with left. Red and blue gazed across the gap between two individuals that seemed to shrink with every one of the millions of times their eyes had met. In familiar unison, their voices began,

"My wish was stupid, but to try to define myself by any one wish always would be. Humans change. Yesterday's aspirations become tomorrow's regrets. That's ok. Despair is when you let yourself think that's unnatural. And I won't despair. I can accept that the me of the now and me of the future are different people. Even if the present me dies, I'll continue to live. I can continue to change. I can continue to become who I want to be. And no punk-ass wish is gonna hold me back from that."

Kyouko exhaled until her chest was empty, and the world seemed to pulse in light and color and sound and smell. No witch could say and mean those words. No labyrinth of their subconscious creation could permit such blatant heresy. Yeah, she'd gotten the idea after watching Inception, but it might be better to say that watching that movie had made her realize what she'd needed the whole time. _Proof_. She was still here. She was still herself. She was still fucking human.

"Can we please change the 'punk-ass' already?"

Kyouko saw some distant kids smushing their faces to the glass, felt the poke of a hard candy in the pocket of her tight jean shorts, thought excitedly of the "to watch" list of movies saved on her phone. Shit, she wanted to cry.

"Screw you. It's perfect. Sums up 'zactly how I feel about it."

She was so goddamn happy to be here. Oh hell, she could forget so damn easily, but she was _happy to be here_.

"Don't ever change, Kyouko."

Her gaze snapped back with disoriented surprise, but the smile and the mischievous twinkle waiting for her made it hard to get angry. She knew what the jerk meant by it, after all. And honestly, all she wanted right now was to ask,

"Hey, can we get outta here?"

Kyouko was a little relieved to see her question bring discomfort creeping into the other girl's—dammit—young woman's shoulders, too. I mean... Kyouko knew that they had to do this sort of thing _once_ in a while. When your biggest fear wasn't an assassination, but a slow poison, sometimes it was important to give yourself a bit of a shock—a harsh reminder of what was out there hunting you, lurking in every deep blue ripple and mesmerizing dollop of flame.

"Mm, yeah, I'm agreeing that this was a pretty crappy date spot." The hell. This punk had her hands clasped back up under the back of her head as she glanced around, like she was still back in middle school or something. "Uncomfortable benches, over-priced food, no closets for me to push you into..."

Once, a long, long time ago—so long ago that an entirely different person had thought it—there was a Kyouko that had believed it was pathetic and weak and stupid to rely on anyone else to get through life. She'd been so sure of it that she'd cut herself off from everyone just so that she could be what she imagined was 'strong' enough to survive.

What absolute bullshit. She wanted to hit the idiot that'd believed something so stupid. And then hug her. Or maybe hug her first. Or maybe only hug her and skip the—

"That's where you're wrong." Kyouko jammed a thumb back over her shoulder. "Saw an unlocked janitor's closet back in the hall we just came from." She snorted. "And baby, I'm not letting any girl wearing a cute one-piece like that push _me_ into a broom closet."

A firm hand closed instantly around her wrist and began tugging Kyouko quickly back in the direction she'd indicated. She suddenly had to shake the out-of-nowhere thought that she wanted that hand to never let her go. Shit, she felt like such a damn _maiden,_ but even then she was still being dishonest with herself. Some day, Kyouko wanted to tell this idiot what she really meant to her.

"It's adorable that you think you mean that. I'll be sure you remind the Kyouko of five minutes from now just how naive her former self was."

Was it dependency, when you verged on being the same person? When between you there was just a single gem of constantly swirling red and blue? How did you tell the difference between that and trust, or love, or support?

"W-We'll see about that..."

Kyouko thought that dependency would make you grind to a halt as a person. If that was true, then shit, there was her answer. This dumbass was her better half, an ideal she strove toward, a strength she spent every day trying to mimic. She was the person Kyouko'd saved just once, and who'd so far spent the rest of forever saving Kyouko every day. God can screw himself if he thought Kyouko wouldn't do everything in her power to chase that same resolve. To constantly climb after and eventually alongside her...

...best friend.

"Hey. I love you, Kyouko."

Her love.

"...Oh, Kyouko. Heh, you know, when you cry like this? It really just makes me wanna do you until you realize how much about you there is to love."

Her hero.


End file.
